Persistence is a part of any successful business person, the ability to continue to completion when there is no visible options and great resistance. By Gary Shotton #000168

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Persistence

By Gary Shotton

Hello, my name is Gary Shotton. I’m here in my machine shop. I’m excited about doing business. I have a life that’s called to be a part of business on a day to day. I currently have some 60 plus employees in this business it’s a machine shop.

I feel responsible though to help others start grow and Excel in business. That’s why we have this website called inspiring for better business free audio and video teachings  for you .You can get it 24/7 on the video or you can get in podcast on audio. Today we’re going to talk about persistence.

You know when I think of the word persistence, I think of someone that’s going to push through, there is going to be a wall in front of them. They are going to figure out a way to get over that wall or to knock that wall down, they are not going to give up easily.

They are not going to be a quitter. Persistence is something that a character quality I think that’s consistent with business. People that succeed you see if every person that tried something quit after the first or second or third failure, You wouldn’t have half of the businesses we have now, we wouldn’t have half of the economy that we have. In fact I don’t think you’re actually in business until you’ve been up against some hard times and you have some tough times where you almost wanted to quit. I can tell you tons of times, when I think back up my dad was a farmer we’re in a dry land farm operation in the middle of the United States. You know we depended on natural rainfall. There was many times that we set there believing that a natural rainfall would come we see we did not have irrigation. You know it didn’t come and eventually we had to just plow up that field and start over for next year. I saw my dad at different times where he in one particular year .My dad was not an emotional person. He wasn’t one that showed a lot of an emotion, that was typically with this set group of this occupation of farming and ranching but probably only twice that I can remember that I see a small tear come just a very small tear and it came out of his eye , it got to about there and then he kind of wiped it off and kind of went on and I’ll tell you one of those times was when he  had a major investment in the cattle business .I’m talking about hundreds of cattle he had basically a hundred head of cattle being sold every week and on that hundred head of cattle he might have been losing $100 per head or ten thousand dollars . This was quite a few years ago so that’s a lot of money and he had purchased these cattle in in Lots and pens so there’s about a hundred every week being bought about a hundred every week being sold. They would be in a feedlot. So this had went on for a little while  the banker called the note and he was right at the end and he wasn’t sure if he was going to be able to pull this through and whatever he did I’m not sure .

All that he did  I will tell you he did not quit he was persistent and in fact he told me in the middle of this or cut at the end he says I’ve got to keep . I have got to continue buying small cattle at raising them knowing that there’s a lag time when he would sell them because at the time that he stops buying them he knew it was going to turn around. He knew that he would gain back quite a bit of money per pin. He stayed consistent stayed on course I had all these similar things maybe not to the same dollar amount happened to me.

I owned moving and storage company was a business prior to this it wasn’t business. I was in moving people. I was low dollar ,I had very little cash I mean there was week after week .I had a very large payroll on Friday and on Monday I had very little money in the bank that means .I had to collect all the money could possibly get from everybody that owed me. I had to do everything I could to make payroll just to make payroll was painful and was week after week month after month and that we paid every other week . So on the off weeks in other words so on the first week of the month .We would pay on Friday would pay a payroll and then the second week.

We pay our other bills like our insurance and like our advertising and like Iran ,house ,truck or a building payment things like that and it was just tight actually not month after month, year after year it was tight and you know where I learned the most though it’s not . I wanted to go through that but I had to go through that to learn. How to really be careful with the way I spent money really understand my finances really understand what was going on.

I didn’t have any extra I didn’t have any ability to waste and you know I wanted to quit ,I remember one time was two ,o’clock in the morning middle of the night I hadn’t worked that long with the crew . If the job didn’t go well and I raised up from the ground .There was a door over the top of me and I didn’t split it open to bleed but I hit the top of my head just about as hard as you possibly could to hit it . I went to my knees and I wanted to quit but I didn’t. I was persistent in fact the matter .I didn’t have many options either I mean if I quit what am I going to do .I can’t quit and so the persistence is part of being a business owner. You are going to find things. I don’t go easily all the time especially early on. Try not to grow too fast try not to grow faster than you should grow that’s a consistent mistake but no matter what you do.

You don’t want to stay the same size unless you’re getting older right now I’m not trying to grow faster and bigger I’m probably kind of leveling off but I could get bigger but I know I’m okay where I’m at so in the younger days .

You want to as an entrepreneur to grow and Excel and do more not for ego but just to be able to employ more people be able  to have more revenue that’s why we’re in the game it’s like a sport you want to win and so in that there’s going to be heartache there’s going to be people. I had more than one person in bezel for me I had my right-hand person and his wife.

There is my wife and I working, and my only other main people was another man. His wife and he got he wasn’t persistent, he dead some bad investment on his own on his side. He decided that you way out was to steal some money from me because he had check-writing ability and left the state,

He left somewhere about 500 miles away over the weekend kind of like in the middle of the night. I wanted to quit I said but I didn’t. The difference many times between success and failure is just the one that would not quit or did not quit .Now if you’re doing something they’re not supposed to be doing or  you know I’m not saying you just hold on till there’s just no hope. But it’s when you’re doing things right you’re doing things to the best of your ability. You know you’re on course and then a bump a rub a wall something shows itself you better push through that or jump over there or  knock it down do something to get through that .because if not you’re going to find yourself all the way through your life. You’re going to come up to a point and here’s a bad thing that happened and you’re going to quit and now you got to start over. I’ll guarantee you when you get on this new business or in this new job somebody made you mad, somebody offended you, somebody didn’t pay you. You know how many times in the moving business I noncollectable.

It made me cry sometimes because I had worked, we had done a hard job and that people wouldn’t pay us, so but if I stopped doing business every time I had a hard spot in the road I wouldn’t be here, I wouldn’t have learned the lesson, So! I hope it didn’t happen on that too long .I hope you understand that we want you to succeed in business and business is not always easy people are going to look on the outside and think you got all the money man.

It’s an easy day all you got to do is get up in the morning and figure out how to count all that money that’s coming in the front door ,well that’s not normally the case well I hope these are helpful ,we want you to be a part of Inspiring Better Business thank you for being a part of this.